"I think this has been a very good year for Riquelme" - Juan Román Riquelme

This is not the first high-profile repatriation in Argentinian football, but it most certainly is a record breaker in terms of money. "The sums involved are as if we were talking of a move between European clubs," says Alejandro Uriona, of Radio del Plata. "Boca have made an enormous effort, financially. It really is the first time an Argentinian club makes an investment of this magnitude."

It is understood that Boca Juniors have agreed to pay Villarreal a total fee of close to 10m euros for the purchase of Riquelme, to be paid over four years. Riquelme's own terms with Boca, on a 30-month contract, are separate and as yet undisclosed. Earlier this week, speaking from Spain, Riquelme said he had been the main instigator of the deal. It is understood by this he meant he has shown certain flexibility towards amounts owed him by Villarreal. Nothing should stand in the way of his return to his natural home: the No10 position on the Bombonera's turf.

It's been a crazy day at Boca: press conferences relating to the Club World Cup, the return of The 10, and print day for the club magazine have all collided on the same afternoon. "It's mental here," says a VERY stressed out press officer, "and as if all that wasn't enough, Diego decided to pop into training to show his support for the squad."

It's reassuring, perhaps, to note that Ma radona's wanderings still keep the press busy - but Boca's current 10 is the one stealing all the limelight. Over his years in Europe, Riquelme has said that every time he sees another player sporting Boca's No10 shirt it feels like that player has borrowed it - it's actually Riquelme's, and only on loan to whoever happens to be wearing it. Before the 2006 World Cup, he told me that his happiest times in football had been the three years spent at Boca. He was very young when he made his first-division debut, and the fans quickly took to his particular style. A traditional 10 in the most Argentinian sense of the word - the thinker, the one who marks the pause, the hook if you like. This is the best word for it, hooking the midfield with the strikers, and naturally the Spanish "enganche" is the most commonly used (though Fifa's dictionary of football terms doesn't include the word). Inside-forward, the suggested English term for the position, doesn't even begin to describe it.

The extinction of the "enganche" in modern football is one of those Big Issues constantly debated among football thinkers. Columnist Hugo Arsch, lamenting the demise of the role, recently wrote: "Nobody buys 10s anymore. Why not? Do they all hate poetry?" Arsch went on to note that the most beautiful exponent of the art of the 10, Ricardo Bochini, never left Argentina to play abroad. Riquelme, he added, should never have. Both belong on home turf, as Argentinian as tango emblem Carlos Gardel.

This was before all the hoo-ha regarding Riquelme's return, completed yesterday. Unlike 'Bocha' Bochini, Riquelme existed in a time where a talent that scoops up trophies - and trophies Riquelme's Boca won - will be touted and scouted by the world stage. For a long time he insisted he didn't want to leave the club, and so his reputation as being "difficult" began to take shape. Offers were good, and local clubs fund their fragile administrations with the sale of players. Relations between Riquelme and the club deteriorated, his reluctance to move seen as a hindrance to progress. "It's simple," he once explained to me. "At the time I never wanted to leave. The only place I wanted to be was there, with the Boca strip. But I had a year before my contract ran out and the club didn't want me to be able to move on a free transfer. They offered to sort me out with a sum of money which I didn't believe was adequate."

He did go, then, to Barcelona, where upon arrival the manager told him he didn't want him, didn't like him, and wasn't going to start him. The move to Villarreal was a lifeline, a small club with many Argentinian players (one of whom enticed Riquelme to join) dreaming of the big time. Riquelme became the heart of the squad, pumping blood to the entire team, and they achieved unprecedented success. That was before. Now, he has not played once this season for the club, and his clash with the manager a year ago prompted a four-month loan to Boca earlier this year which he relished. He inspired the conquest of the Libertadores Cup, marred only by the knowledge that on June 30, just after his 29th birthday, he would have to return to Villarreal.

"If you call what happened there a problem," Riquelme told TN news yesterday, "then it's a problem which enabled me to achieve a lot: to win the Libertadores, to take part in the Copa America. I like to think it's been a good year for Riquelme.

"I always say football is my job from Monday to Saturday. On Sundays I can't call it a job because playing the match is the most lovely thing for a player. For the past few months I've not had the luck of the draw, but at least I'm content because when I was a little boy I was always told it's important to tell the truth, and I've told the truth even if it meant I didn't get to play on the Sunday."

The way he still refers to Sunday as match day is nostalgia for a time when that was the case. Now, in Argentina like everywhere, football day isn't confined to one afternoon a week but spread across seven days to maximise TV viewing figures, sponsorship and marketing. That is how Boca managed to lose their lead over Tigre this past Wednesday, a defeat which cost them any possibility they might have had, however remote, of remaining in the title race. "Boca fans must be pinching themselves to make sure this isn't a nightmare," radio commentator Victor Hugo Morales said yesterday. Hence Diego's appearance at the training ground, to boost team morale.

The nightmare, as is the case in football, always has the potential to morph into a dream again. Riquelme's return on the very day symbolises this. "I'm lucky that all my family are Boca fans," said Riquelme yesterday, "so we're happy because I'm back and happy because Riquelme's back at Boca".

The club plan to lodge an appeal with Fifa, via the Argentinian Football Association, which will enable the player to partake in the Club World Cup, the Intercontinental to be played in Japan next week. Boca's ambition is to take on Milan in the final. The list of players had to be submitted already, and Riquelme's name wasn't on it, which renders him ineligible. But Boca are arguing that he was on a valid contract from the Libertadores time, and having not played a single match for Villarreal this season, there may be a way round this. It's clearly a contentious issue. I had hoped to talk briefly to Boca's acting president, Pedro Pompilio, but in the chaos that was the press office I heard someone say: "She's going to ask about Japan and I'm not saying anything about that."

That's when they grabbed Uriona instead. He was walking away from the press conference and had recorded Pompilio's statements: "Immense happiness to have him back at the club," is the official quote. "Contract for two and a half years, but hope of retaining him even longer".

"Does Riquelme still have two playing years ahead of him?" I later asked his friend Claudio Freire, the TN reporter. "And more," he replied categorically. His is a style of play that prompted Ronaldo to once say "Riquelme is like Zidane, but young." He may be older now, but his magic is in his reading of the game, his measured precise passes, and of course, his free kicks. He don't run much, but as the former Argentina coach César Luis Menotti said of him: "Since when is it necessary to run to play football?"

In the fast-paced, super-physical football imposing itself on pitches round the globe, a 10 like Riquelme is as unusual as he is delightful to those of us who have a taste for such delicate architecture. "Look, it's just a pleasure to watch him play," Freire says, truly unable to find a more suitable description. Novelist Juan Sasturain, who talks of the emotional responses we have to football as "facts of reality", once wrote that "It is more enriching for the spirit and the soul to watch Riquelme play than it is to read [literature]".

Arsch can smile; a 10 has commanded the highest fee in Argentinian football. On the same day, the poet Juan Gelman was awarded the Cervantes prize, the Spanish-speaking world's answer to the Nobel prize for literature. "This is an important day for poetry," Gelman said. "It is being recognised."

Indeed.

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